Fry him

Well, have you seen the thing about Stephen Fry? First off, let me say, I quite like him as an actor and writer. But, homeboy made the make of saying that women don’t like sex as much as men. And he got PASTED for it. Straight across the kisser. The Internet tarred, feathered, vilified and bitch slapped him. For something that he thought was a joke. Like a funny-ha-ha-truth-in-clown-pants kind of joke. And the web babblesphere said, “Tain’t funny, McGee.”

And from his half-assed apology, you can really tell he doesn’t get what the vitriol is about. Myself, I think it comes from two things. Not that what he said was wrong. It’s debatable. I think in two respects the heat came from the way he put things.

First, his statement came off as women think differently from men, and therefore they are wrong. And this comes after about 50,000 years of women being told that “You’re just a stupid girl, so what do you know.” It’s a man’s man’s world, baby. Still. And if a gal has spent her entire life, everyday, being told by the nearest arm of the patriarchy (not to go all 70s era gyno-positive on you) that her viewpoint is essentially feminine (and therefore wrong), then when one dude sticks his head out in public to shoot his mouth off in this way, yeah, somebody is going to fire back. Stephen, you were just the latest in a long line of men who has called us wrong (and essentially you said we f*** wrong - really? REALLY? You thought that wouldn't piss women off?). And you did it in public. We already had itchy trigger fingers. We killed the messenger. Sorry, dude.

Second, Fry made the cardinal logical error of making a blanket statement about “women”. Honey, any time that you base and argument on an assumption that a group that makes up half of the world population is monolithic and concurrent about ANY opinion, you were on thin ice to start with. And if you thought that you could speak for all men, I’d hazard a guess that you were speaking out of turn there as well. If he thought he’d win that argument because no woman would ever say “Hey! I like sex with a stranger standing up in a service station bathroom stall too!” . . . guess he found out times have changed.

That’s the way it is. Sometimes a casual remark can hit a nerve. You thought you were making a joke, and it turned dead serious. But I certainly wouldn’t ever want a provocative thinker to back off. Say the outrageous. But next time, before you make a joke, you might want to make sure you’re wearing a cup.